Well, apparently my Nvidia 570 has hit its end of life with Thief. The 'paltry' 1.25GB of VRAM just is absolutely not enough in this day and age, despite everything else working quite well otherwise (been able to run basically max settings on all games I've played, but Thief I'm at Normal Textures because of the VRAM usage).

So in short, I'm looking for something that has 2GB of VRAM (at least) that'll be a decent upgrade without breaking the bank (and Nvidia preferred).

I game at 1920x1080 and never run AA of any kind (I just don't see the benefit at that resolution) so that'll keep the VRAM usage down for the future.

I'll step in and advise that 2GB of vram is a _minimum_ upgrade these days for smooth gaming, especially towards the upper end of the spectrum, which 1080p qualifies as.

You said don't break the bank. Might I suggest a gtx 760 with 4GB? Should run around $300. Or a 770 which will set you back another Benjamin.

After these, your next step up is a plain-jane GTX 780... which is what I'm currently using at the 1920x1080 resolution you're targeting. And yes, it works great. Figure I've got another two years out of this card minimum, assuming Star Citizen doesn't eat its lunch. (it's a little sluggish atm, but I assume tuning will bring performance up as they go)

Gaming res is increasing. Game texture resolutions are increasing. Stuff like post-processing and AA are getting more intensive. (yes I noticed you mentioned no AA atm)

Thing to remember folks... if you want the nice screen and the big game textures... the gpu you need to drive it at decent framerates starts getting pretty expensive

I'm also in the market and also as clueless as Destructor. Is there anything in particular I'd need to have in a video card to be future-proof enough to have good performance when the Oculus Rift comes out?

I've been happy with the ASUS cards. I'm on my second one now (780). They're just $10 more than the reference card prices, a bit faster, and run pretty quiet.

For Thief my experience with the ASUS 780 I'm getting 60fps average according to the benchmark with everything up except SSAO at low and AF at 8x - this is at 1920x1200. But even when I had everything on the highest settings it seemed to be running fine. Its just the cut sequences that will sometimes get slowdown. So I'm not sure how accurate the in-game benchmark is. I should also note I'm using NVidia's Adaptive Sync which probably smooth things out as it works wonderful in most games.

That's a pretty solid card based on the review. And right in my price range (of basically $300 or so - I'm really not interested in dropping $500 for a card unless it's powered by magic or something ) as well.

Maybe I'll end up with a GTX 760 of some sort. Seems to be right in that sweet spot.

Logged

"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

I finally found the link to the article on Tom's Hardware, Best Graphics Cards For The Money: February 2014. The linked page is the high end card (which I got) but the drop down at top gives you access to their choices in other price ranges.